Are visions from God, or the Devil or indigestion?

quote:

---

I saw this in my "minds eye" as I was going to sleep on Tuesday night. I only see this kind of thing maybe once a year, if that. I haven't been able to find the building on the web but I know that I have seen it before.

---

I dreamed that alien spacecraft bombed the whitehouse a few days ago. I interpret that as my mind's creative manifestation of my opposition to the attack on Iraq.You almost certainly have dreams every night, but you don't remember them. If you were hooked up to a monitor and were woken when you went into REM sleep, you would be able to recount every dream.

quote:

---

Are there real visions?

---

I dunno. What's a vision?

quote:

---

Does this have any significance or is this caused by some random misfirings in my brain or bad pizza?

---

I dunno. What do you mean by "significance"?

quote:

---

Are there real psychics??

---

Very doubtful. So far, any psychic who has been tested under standard controlled conditions has done no better than chance would predict.People like von Pragh and Sylvia Browne refuse to be tested, because they probably know that they will fail.Psychics are skilled cold readers, and people like Jon Edwards of "Crossing Over" infamy, cheat.

quote:

---

If so, then where do they get their "power" from? How can we distinguish between a good prophet and an evil prophet?

---

I don't think we need to start wondering about "real" psychics until one crops up.

quote:

---

Certainly I have received 'Massa' and witnessed it come true through out the years.

---

To be accurate, I would suggest that you believe that you have received 'massa'.

quote:

---

I am sure that I know that I have.

---

The people who believe they have been abducted by aliens have just as much surety and conviction in that what happened to them is real as you have that you have received "massa".The problem is, you both have exactly the same amount of evidence to support your claims.Why should I believe either of you?

quote:

---

The best explanation I have heard that parts from God given dreams is that when we go into the state of sleep, our body drops a degree of temp. If our brain were to do this there would be certain damage done, so in response our brain shoots off neurological impulses which translate into REM accompanied with dreams...

---

Who told you that?Uh, wow, that is some explanation.It's also wrong.In fact, lowering of body temperature is being used to prevent brain damage in people in cardiac arrest who have a sudden loss of blood pressure, and slightly lowering body temperature during heart surgery protects the brain.http://www.mercola.com/2002/mar/6/cardiac_arrest.htmI suggest maybe reading up on sleep and dreams from a scientific/Biological perspective.

quote:

---

I believe that for most of us humans that sadly this is all it will ever amount too, the only difference I believe is when we have faith that God is the giver of dreams and the 'only' interpreter of dreams...

---

Why is it sad? I think it is amazingly cool and deeply fascinating that our brains are so complex.

quote:

---

I certainly do believe that some people have been abducted, but these aliens again come to mind as being Angelic beings whom fell from grace...

---

So, is the reason you believe someone is the conviction with which they believe what they are saying?I'll be there are at least 30 or 40 people who believe that they are Jesus, and they hold this belief passionately, with all theiir hearts.

quote:

---

they could just be dreams or visions, I am not one to judge...

---

You are not one to judge? You don't think you have any power or ability to discern the likely from the unlikely, and that which is supported by reliable evidence and that which isn't?So, do you believe that gravity is caused by invisible fairies which push down on everything all the time?

quote:

---

Here's a funny thing: I'm not sure this would happen. I have a playful - partly serious - notion of why this might not be so.

---

Well, what I described is how sleep/dream research is done. Subjects get hooked up to an EEG monitor through electrodes stuck to their scalp, they go to sleep, and when REM waves show up on the monitor and they are woken up, they almost always report a dream. If you wake them up during stages of sleep where other kinds of brain waves are going on, they do not report dreams.It's really very consistent.

quote:

---

I frequently have dreams which lead up to an unpredictable waking waking event. For example, in my dream I'm driving and I crash the car: I wake up at that instant just as an overloaded bookshelf in my library crashes to the floor. I know many people have similar experiences and find them very mysterious.

---

Hmm, I am skeptical of this, sorry.Are these dreams really leading up to this unpredictable event, or did you dream the car crash because you heard the bookcase crash to the floor? The timeline is very important here, but it is difficult to be clear because you are in a semi-awake dreaming state where fantasy and reality can be blurred.Have you recorded the number of times this kind of thing has happened, and is it greater than chance would predict, or are you just remembering the times that it has happened and ignoring all the times that it hasn't?

quote:

---

Yet you are right, too. The "activity" of dreaming seems very real - the REM sleep, the twitching, speaking even.

​

Imagine if it actually happens like this. During REM sleep, during what appear to others to be our dreaming state, our mind is actually just firing off largely out of its normal patter and therapeutically - you could compare it to defragging a hard drive, perhaps. See it as a way of relaxing those neurons that are overused during the day, and exercising the underused ones - the better to ensure that rarely activated, but potentially valuable, neural pathways are still "primed."

---

Might be. I don't know.

quote:

---

On waking, we now have our memory in a given state, and critically it likely includes our waking event if there was one.

​

How do we interpret this state? By doing what the human mind always does - we construct a narrative which explains, however bizzarely, how we got there.

---

I certainly agree that this is how the brain often works.

quote:

---

Think of it like the martian vacation in the movie Total Recall - all the memories of a vacation with none of the inconvenience of actually having one!

​

It would be interesting to consider what experiments might confirm this notion, were it to be fleshed out to a hypothesis.

---

Well, it is certainly quite easy to implant false memories in a large percentage of the population, and they can be wide awake.

quote:

---

Philosophically there would be an objection, I suppose, to even the possibility of determining that an unconscious subject was dreaming at a given moment. Norman Malcolm, the American logical positivist, outlined such objections in his fine book "Dreaming."

---

Nah, it's clear that people are almost always dreaming when they are in REM sleep, and the EEG can tell us when that is happening, and we can confirm it by waking people up and asking them if they were dreaming.

quote:

---

S: I'll be there are at least 30 or 40 people who believe that they are Jesus, and they hold this belief passionately, with all theiir hearts.

---

quote:

---

Yes , but if any of those 40 people ROSE FROM THE DEAD you would need to acknowledge some validity there.

---

Yes, I would, but that is physical evidence, isn't it?Without such physical evidence, all we have is your assurances that you have received "massa", just as all we have are a bunch of people who assure me that they are Jesus.

quote:

---

There are some things beyond our explanation and clearly beyond the realm of physics.

---

Really? Like what?

quote:

---

It is very possible that I would have been dead more than 20 years ago if an angel didn't intervene on my behalf. I might add, that this was BEFORE I called myself a "born again christian". I will give the details of the experience in my next post, but I promise that it defies the law of physics. This was NOT a dream. It was real.

---

Can't wait.

quote:

---

There are definitely psychics among us (even in the church, although the terminology for them is different).

---

And you know this how?

quote:

---

As a matter of fact, we all have psychic ability.

---

Really? How do you know this?

quote:

---

People outside the church who are called psychics (actually, most of them refer to themselves as "Intuitives" or "Empaths") are simply people who have been more encouraged to develop and practice their ability.

---

They might also be called "cold readers", or "frauds", depending.

quote:

---

Of course, there are some (like Evangelists) who use it for profit and gain--nobody is perfect.

---

More common is the non-religious huckster or self-deluded self-promoter, such as Sylvia Browne, VonPraugh, and Jon Edwards.

quote:

---

There is no such thing as a good or an evil "psychic" or a good or evil "prophet." There is simply "accurate" or "inaccurate."

---

Skilled cold readers, regardless if they are knowingly pretending to have mystical abilities or if they are self-deluded, can be amazingly accurate. However, when they are not led by people, given information to help them, and basically made to perform under normal experimental protocols, they fail. Not just some of them; ALL of them fail or perform no better than chance would predict.

quote:

---

Basically, it depends on ones ability to get himself out of the way and allow the information to come through with no "twists" or "Spins" from his own personality. In Metaphysics, we refer to a person like that as a "Clear channel." The clearer the person is, the more accurate the informaton. Many people in Metaphysics (and many Eastern religions) believe that there is no such thing as "time" as we perceive it--all events are actually taking place simultaneously, so that past, present, and future are all one. This is how the psychic is able to "see." One cannot actually see something if it hasn't taken place. You can almost picture all events placed on a vertical line--situated in different places but all occurring at the same time. The person with more developed psychic ability is simply able to move back and forth along that line and view events in a way that others cannot. It's really nothing "mysterious."

---

In the Metaphysic world, we believe that a person is actually "astral-projecting" or leaving their body during the dream state. In fact, we believe that is the entire purpose of having to sleep. We are not actually our bodies--we are spirit beings, and those spirits can only endure being cooped up in bodies for so many hours at a time. When we begin to feel tired and exhausted, it is an indicated that the spirit has been "housed" for too long and needs to get out. We also believe that there are many planes of "existence" and many "realities" occurring similtaneously, and during the dream time, the spirit is able to visit some of these other planes & realities--sometimes what we would refer to as "past life" experiences, (although there is actually no such thing as past, present, or future). This is why we might see ourselves in events that to our knowledge have never taken place. In some other reality, these things may very well be taking place.[QUOTE] Sorry, this is nice and all, but is not any kind of explanation.It's really just a story.

quote:

---

I'm not sure that some of your comments cannot
be reflected back.

---

?

quote:

---

I am sure that not ALL who claim to be psychic have undergone
laboratory assessments,

---

I am sure of this, too, despite there being a $1,000,000 prize to anyone demonstrating their stated abilities under standard wxperimental protocols.

quote:

---

so the best that can be said
(dispasionately) is that such individuals do something
which we do not entirely understand at present.

---

No, it is often very well-understood if examined critically. They are observed in the act of cold-reading. Their subjects remember the hits and disregard the misses, and also feed the cold-reader information which helps them. It is a very-well understood phenomena that illusionists and magicians have used for a long time, and charlatans and the self-deluded have also used for a long time.Just because every single self-proclaimed psychic has not been tested doesn't mean they are all self-deluded or frauds. However, the fact that not a single one who has been tested has been able to do what they said they could do, combined with the fact that cold-reading can appear as psychic ability when controls are not in place, tends to weigh heavily against the idea that psychic ability is real.See this for more information:cold reading - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.comError 404 - Australian Skeptics Inc

quote:

---

Have you, for instance, heard of remote viewing ... several
government agencies have active programmes in these areas
(allegedly).

---

Yes, I have heard of remote viewing, and it has not been demonstrated to be a real phenomena under controlled conditions.Governments are filled with politicians, not scientists nor skeptical thinkers, so it does not surprise me that some would be attracted to RV.See this for more info:remote viewing - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

That's more evidence that doctors are not scientists.

quote:

---

I understand there's a phenomenon called the "Ganzfeld"(sp?) effect where people experiencing sensory deprevation have greater-than-chance success at "recieving" pictures and messages mentally from senders in the next room who concentrate really hard.

---

There are lots of problems with the Ganzfield experiments:ganzfeld - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

quote:

---

Of course it smacks of pseudoscience so it's hard to attract funding.

---

It's not pseudoscience, exactly. It's more like sloppy science.